A single bottle of Japanese Yamazaki whiskey sells for $298,879 at Sotheby’s

This just happened! A rare bottle of Japanese Yamazaki whiskey went down for a whopping $298,879 at a Sotheby’s! Yup, you read that right! The unbelievable sale makes the revered single malt the most expensive kind to be sold at auction, and also reinstates the fact that aged whiskies indeed have takers willing to pay any price to own them!
The recently sold Yamazaki, aged 50 years, comes with an original wooden presentation case and a decanter signed by Suntory’s Master Blender Fukuyo Shinji on November 23, 2012. The rare concoction is further made up of malt whiskies aged in Japanese oak casks that give it a rich, mature aroma much like that of aloe wood and ripe fruit. On the palate, the Yamazaki tastes smooth and almost silk-like with sweet and smoky undertones.

The Yamazaki single malt rose to fame after it was praised for its “noble” aroma at the International Spirits Challenge (ISC) in 2003, and since then it has been in the news. A previous world record for the Yamazaki 50 year old was established in November 2016 at Bonhams, where one of its bottles sold for $75181.68. The newest of its kind now sits with an anonymous Asian buyer who willingly gave up twice its estimate to own it!